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After the excitement and spectacle of Todmorden’s Valley of Lights celebration on Saturday, expectations were running high for the Hebden Bridge leg. Swapping the rain for a clear, frosty moonlit night, the town shivered with cold and the thrill of anticipation.

Handmade Parade invited me to come and take some panoramic photos, so I was lucky enough to get a grandstand view of the finale at Old Gate, right across the river. We watched as the lantern parade culminated in the participants lining the riverbanks, waiting expectantly. Performers filed over the old bridge, heralding the start of the finale performance, and then we were treated to an hour of stunning dance, theatre, puppetry, drama and pyrotechnics.

The atmosphere in the crowd was electric, fuelled by the eye-catching performances (from the highly talented local Handmade Parade and FlameOz crews). As I’d sat behind the fire sculptures at Tod, it was great to get an audience-eye view of the main show. Two fire dancers started the finale, marching over the bridge and twirlingFirst watching the tableau depicting the rainclouds gathering over the valley’s characteristic landmarks… cottages, mills and even Stoodley Pike. As the rainclouds encircled the valley, a huge furious paper dragon came down Old Gate, wrapping itself around the players; then shadow puppeteers evoked the enveloping wall of water which the flooding brought to the valley. Stellar fire performances from FlameOz gripped the audience, while a fiery sculpture of the dragon glowered in the gloom behind. This ramped up the excitement further, before a wall of pyrotechnics lit up the length of the river and bought the event to a close. Epic stuff…

If you click the image at the top of the page you’ll be able to view three different 360° panoramas, shot from a pole above the crowds. They show different stages in the show; from the lantern landmarks, to the fire sculpture, and the pyrotechnic fountains at the finale. And if you pan around you’ll see the crowd agog and enrapt, and may even spot some wide-eyed children looking from the first floor window of the cottage behind us.

After that we moved to the car park to see the 200 LED-strewn riders on the Night Light Bike Ride as they streamed in for a quick break before moving onto Mytholmroyd, before heading down to the canalside for food, drink and craft stalls at the Night Market & Canal Boat Flotilla. A hot cider from the Real Cider Company, and a Porcus sausage barm did wonders to restore circulation after several hours in subzero temperatures.

It was great family night out, and felt like a resounding success. It shows that, despite adversity and hardship, local talent and enthusiasm is enough for a community to tease out a silver lining from dark storm clouds here in the Pennines!

After severe flooding hit the Calder Valley twice in rapid succession this summer, the local communities reacted brilliantly to this devastating challenge. Businesses and individuals pulled together, demonstrating the indefatigable local spirit and individual outlook which characterises the upper valley, bringing together neighbours and strangers alike.

With many residential and commercial properties affected for months by the floods, it’s been a tough year, and collectively the area deserved a reason to celebrate their achievements since… and let their hair down. Fast forward six months and cue the Valley of Lights; a unique initiative spearheaded by Totally Locally, supported by Calderdale Council and creatively led by Handmade Parade. Embracing the pool of talent, enthusiasm and skill of hundreds of artists, performers, producers, retailers and members of the public, it’s an event spread over ten days in the three towns worst affected by the flooding here – Todmorden, Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd.

Designed to celebrate the Upper Calder Valley; its people, its creativity, its uniqueness and its hundreds of small businesses, it combined community initiatives with a series of spectacular performances, outdoor markets and displays. It’s a gloriously welcome way to usher in the start of the Christmas period, and the switch on of the lights in each town.

It was Tod’s turn first on Saturday 24th November, and as luck would have it, the heavens opened just before the start of the celebrations. Ironic considering the heavy rain in the summer. However folk round here are hardy and won’t easily turn down the excuse for a celebration and performance… especially one designed to showcase their triumph over the natural elements. Besides, we do parades and parties well around here, such as the Pollination Parade early this year.

After the Christmas Lights switch on, performers and musicians led a Lantern Parade around the town, before a spectacular fire finale in at the Rose Street / Bramsche Square site. Tod Market stayed open late, with both regulars and local artist makers selling their wares, encouraging shoppers to spend their pounds close to home. Musicians and street performers weaved among the heaving crowds, raising smiles and spirits through the rain.

Meanwhile there was a spectacular wharfside flotilla along Fielden Wharf on the Rochdale Canal, featuring lit-up inflatables by Spacecadets (you can view some panoramas of their work from Preston in 2006 and the Lowry, Salford in 2007 respectively). Live music was performed by Daniel Weaver from an open narrowboat: you can just spot him through the crowds during the timelapse video above.

Friends and food clients alike, local food heroes Porcus and the Bear Café set up stall to warm the hearts (and bellies) of the brave souls who ventured out in the rain. I set up my trusty GoPro and recorded a (very soggy) timelapse video of Porcus serving up their homemade rare breed sausages, while I tried out my new DSLR in wet weather conditions. All in all it was damp but delightful night, perfectly showcasing the diversity and distinctiveness of the local area, and making people rightly proud of what they have and hold dear!

Click/tap the image above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

I recently installed a permanent series of four large format prints in the Bear Café in Todmorden. It was a great commission; combining my passion for local food and photography, crafting a detailed and distinctive view behind the scenes in the kitchen.

The initial brief was to deliver an artwork which would achieve two things: showcase some of their local suppliers and producers, and better inform customers that all the food is prepared on the premises.

Both are central to their business… the Bear is passionate about using local, sustainable produce wherever possible, and has long been affiliated with initiatives like Incredible Edible Todmorden. They’re also proud of how their dishes are produced on the premises, but as the kitchen is two floors away from the dining area, customers are often unaware of this. The client had previously seen my work so was onboard with the idea of using a high resolution 360° panoramic print, so we could capture the detail and experience of the kitchen fully.

Like any shoot, proper planning was key. I shot an initial test panorama during a recce a week beforehand: this allowed us to consider the positioning of products and people, and then we used a printout to mark up areas to address. As we always had a large, detailed print in mind, one of the key things to bear in mind was that we wanted an even distribution of points of interest throughout the scene. The client was keen to emphasise the importance of the teamwork and skills of the whole staff, so we planned their positioning.

We were keen to use bright natural sunlight streaming through the kitchen window to beautifully illuminate the fresh produce on display, so worked out the optimum shoot time for direct light. The team at the Bear ensured the space was organised, and added a lick of paint to the walls, making sure even a working environment would look at its best, while still staying true to its purpose. I’ll always explain to clients that a quick wipe-down or tidy-up in real life can save hours in post production… and the real-world effects last for longer too!

Chef Scott and manager Rhian added lots of little touches and details to the scene to reflect the personalities in the business… from Scott’s homemade kimchi in jars and stickers of seminal Manchester club nights on storage containers, through to the signature wooden bear who normally sits on the bar upstairs. See if you can spot them all…

After the shoot I processed the panorama, working at higher resolution than normal, and then tested several different projections to portray the whole 360° of the kitchen with as little distortion as possible. In the end I chose four square prints, each covering 90°, and prepared the final images for print.

The detailed fine art printing and mounting was by CPS Digital in Manchester. They did a great job. The installation, before opening hours, was fun… and the final work closely resembled the mockups we’d envisaged. Looks great, can be seen from the street outside, and it’s been provoking discussion and interest since it went onto the walls.

Thanks to all at the Bear for their help, co-operation, patience and enthusiasm. Read below the jump for more technical photographic info…

I elected to use only natural light for the scene, rather than fill-in flash so after positioning the camera properly I shot a ‘naked’ version of the scene, without staff in place. This was useful to gauge the dynamic range, check lines of sight, and so forth.

As you might expect from bright direct sunshine, there was a huge dynamic range. I shot 13 exposures for each view, ranging from 1/640 to over 6 seconds, which tested the patience of the participants somewhat.

The RAWs were processed in Lightroom, converted to HDR and tonemapped with HDR Expose 2, stitched with PTGui, and finished in Photoshop.

Shot with a Canon EOS50D, Sigma 10mm f2.8 fisheye, Nodal Ninja 5, Promote Remote control. 13 shots per bracket, 1EV apart, f11, ISO125.

Click/tap the image above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

Click/tap the image above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

Finally caught the renowned Optimo DJ duo in action at the Reading Rooms in Dundee. Last time I was here, in 2008, I saw Andrew Weatherall in action and I wanted to shoot a panorama but wasn’t able to). This time I came prepared… and determined…

Optimo (Espacio) was a long-running club night/institution in Glasgow. The weekly residency may’ve finished but JD Twitch and JG Wilkes regularly take their show on the road to showcase the mixes which make their DJ sets so legendary.

Eclectic is an oft-used term but it genuinely applies to these guys’ sets. Note the AC/DC sleeve poking out; not often you’ll hear that in a tracklist next to Chicago acid house classics and Boddika jack trax. I’ve been enjoying their mixes for close to a decade so it was good to finally see them in person.

Contemplating Veronica
(featuring Mark Dean’s The Veil of Veronica (offset Halo). 2012)

Custom format large photograph, shot at 15.2mm / f 0.42
Click/tap the image above to view a high resolution zoomable view of the scene in your browser. 

Defying Logic and Absenting Certainty
(featuring Alistair McClymont’s The Limitations of Logic and The Absence of Absolute Certainty. 2008)

Custom format large photograph, shot at 18.5mm / f 0.52
Click/tap the image above to view a high resolution zoomable view of the scene in your browser. 

Details and elements of the current exhibition at Islington Mill in Salford, showcasing work by a series of artists represented by Man & Eve, and curated by Lucie Newman Cleeve.

After shooting a 360° panorama of Susie MacMurray’s Stratum in July, I was smitten by the attic space in the mill, so was more than happy to accept an invite to come along to Brittle Crazie Glasse to capture a further series of detailed photographs. With such a range of scale and media across the exhibits, it’s a fantastically diverse collection.

As with before, I was as taken by the space which the pieces were exhibited in, as by the works themselves. The contrasts of texture, light and volume across the fifth floor and attic are striking and compelling… and chime perfectly with my interests in capturing light, form and texture.

The title comes from a line in George Herbert’s poem ‘The Windows’. However the section of the poem which resonated most with me was…

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe…  

The exhibition is well worth visiting, and runs until November 4th 2012. More info at the Islington Mill website. Thanks to Shereen at Islington Mill for all her help.

The North’s biggest art fairs return to Manchester! Thursday evening saw preview evenings at both Buy Art Fair, and The Manchester Contemporary: their busiest and best ever.

Despite a rainy day, the weather behaved itself properly as guests streamed into the bespoke marquee set up in Manchester’s Spinningfields, and Quay House, to view the biggest selection of contemporary art either exhibition has yet displayed. Both events ran until Sunday 30th September.

We captured a range of 360° panoramic views of the opening evening and over the weekend: whether you were there with us, or if you couldn’t make it in person, you can now experience the thrill of both exhibitions virtually.

[Update] The organisers have revealed the whole weekend was a colossal success: the number of visitors, and the volume of art sales to those visitors, was up significantly on any previous year. Over 7000 unique visitors across four days… another example to suggest Manchester can claim to be second only to London in terms of both audience receptiveness and cultural significance.

Click/tap the images below to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

Exterior aerial view of the Buy Art Fair marquee, showing the last rays of sunset lighting the sky above Spinningfields

The entrance area of Buy Art Fair 2012 marquee in Spinningfields

Buy Art Fair marquee – rear of marquee with photographer Bill Ward and a selection of his work, as well as the band

The Manchester Contemporary – busy scenes in Room 1 on the opening night

The Manchester Contemporary – Ceri Hand Gallery, Conway, Anne-Marie Ros Projects – NL in Room 3 on the opening night

The Manchester Contemporary – Rokeby in Room 2 on the opening night

The Manchester Contemporary – The International 3 in Room 2 on the opening night

Exterior aerial view of the Buy Art Fair marquee on Saturday, with sun breaking out over Spinningfields

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Click/tap the image above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

This installation, Stratum 2011 by Susie MacMurray is made up from around 80 kilos of feather down, carpeting the floorspace of the attic in Islington Mill in Salford in a dreamlike film of feathers. As you clamber up the steep wooden staircase, you emerge into a veritable cloudscape of soft textured down, providing a curious sense of weightlessness. Talk about having your head in the clouds. The contrast between the infinite bright lightness of the feathers, and the textured wooden beams, cobwebs and dark shadows around is incredibly powerful.

The piece celebrates ten years of Islington Mill as a cradle of creativity, performance and inspiration, and draws on MacMurray’s time as artist in residence a decade ago, when she created a similar installation. I’d originally heard about this when working at a client’s in the Mill late last year, and knew it’d make an amazing subject for a panorama. I’d already seen a short video by Ed Baptist, concentrating on the attic’s entropic decay and detail, so the prospect of shooting the exhibit in such surroundings thrilled me even more. I love capturing contrasts in texture and light in my panoramas.

It’s only viewable by appointment, so when found I had two food photography shoots in Salford booked on the same afternoon, with a spare half an hour between them, I contacted Shereen at Islington Mill to arrange a flying visit. I’ve since spent much longer looking at the photos than I had to drink in the detail in person onsite. A good thing, as I’ve since spotted a lot which I’d never have taken in at the time…

However I’d recommend arranging your own visit if you can… while this high resolution 360° photograph gives some idea of the scale, scope and otherworldliness of the installation, only being there and experiencing all the sensory stimuli can really capture the full impact of the exhibit.

Incidentally, one of my friends told me about him and a few others visiting the original installation a decade ago. Despite copious signage, and their protestations, they looked on in horror as one of their friends cast off her shoes and ran, barefoot, amongst the feathers. Obviously I did not do this…

Finally, I’m going to start sharing more of the technique and insight behind the image on my blog. So, to get things started, here’s the tech stuff. With only fifteen or twenty minutes between photoshoots, I had to set up my kit and shoot quickly. I metered the light levels (there was a wide dynamic range of around 15EV) and then shot a series of 14 exposures as quickly as I could. I wasn’t happy with the first series of images, watching my histogram on the camera, so went back and started again part-way through to better capture the light.

Kit & process. Canon EOS 50D & Sigma 10mm 2.8 fisheye lens; shot at F8, ISO100, 14 exposures between 1/640 and 13 seconds. 140 photos in total. Initial RAW processing in Lightroom 4.1, then 16bit TIFFs processed and tone-mapped in HDR Expose 2. Further tweaking in Lightroom 4.1, then stitched together as a large spherical panorama in PTGui 9. Final retouching, processing and grading in Photoshop CS6, before the definitive outputs created in Pano2VR 4.0b.

And here are a few samples of the same frame at different stages of the process. For me the texture and tonal variation in the scene was key, so I tried to bring this out in the final image with several different HDR and exposure stacking techniques. It’s a challenging photographic subject: the tonal uniformity and subtle complexity of the feathers; the textured, worn and weathered wood; and the details through the bright windows.

I used Photomatix at first, but found the tone mapping and exposure fusion options left me wanting. The colours were a bit aggressive. Next up, Enfuse, which handled the shadows pretty well, but blew out the window highlights a lot. Then I tried HDR Expose 2, which I’d hardly used since it was released, and found it coped much more admirably with the huge range between the windows and the interior shadows. This was the best ‘one shot’ approach, without the usual need for manually masking and stacking several exposures in post. As with most creative techniques, there’s more than one approach, and ultimately I was aiming to capture a personal, subjective view of the artwork. I’m pleased with how the final piece came out.

If you liked this, you may enjoy a previous panorama shot in Islington Mill back in 2008, during the Electrospective event with Greg Wilson and others.

Click/tap the images above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

Cheese as far as the eye can see: a cheeselovers paradise!

Over three and a half thousand cheeses were entered into this year’s International Cheese Awards in Nantwich… their largest ever show, and the best place in the world to see, taste (and smell) cheeses of every conceivable variety and class.

This was the trade day: a chance to observe the judges at work, the products looking perfect, meet the producers (some familiar, some not), and soak up some of the atmosphere as the winners of each class, and eventually the supreme champions were announced. I shot a range of 360° panoramas from high above the trade floor… probably the only way to convey just how much cheese there was on display!

Click/tap the image above to view a panoramic 360° view of the scene in your browser.

Here’s a conversion of a panoramic photo which NASA published a couple of days ago. In NASA’s own words ”this full-circle scene combines 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter.“

As soon as I saw the full resolution image I wanted to turn it into an interactive panorama. However, rather than wade in and significantly change the content, I decided to honour the original image almost ‘as is’. It’s an awesome image in its own right, and the visible seams and fake colours add to the character of the view.

So apart from extending the image to cover a full 360° x 180° spherical view – painting in some sky and adding the NASA ‘meatball’ logo – and adding a little more contrast to the scene, there is no retouching or changes. Now you can get the feeling you’re standing on Mars, under orange skies, seeing a view no human has experienced first-hand.

You can read the full NASA article, and view the full resolution image here. Original image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Universities.

[Edit: since posting this I spotted NASA have published their own version, which is Java-based. You can view it here. I thought it was too cool for somebody not to have done it].